With its headline and large picture,
And remain like that, bent over, reading
Intently, with her robe opening bit by bit,
The dangling breast and dark pubic hair
Still moist with sleep coming into full view,
While she read on in that ghastly whisper.
THE TRAGIC SENSE OF LIFE
Because few here recall the old wars,
The burning of Atlanta and Dresden,
The great-uncle who lies in Arlington,
Or that Vietnam vet on crutches
Who tried to bum a dime or a cigarette.
The lake is still in the early morning light.
The road winds; I slow down to let
A small, furry animal cross in a hurry.
The few remaining wisps of fog
Are like smoke rising out of cannons.
In one little town flags fly over dark houses.
Outside a church made of gray stone,
The statue of the Virgin blesses the day.
Her son is inside afraid to light a candle,
Saying, Forgive one another, clothe the naked.
Niobe and her children may live here.
As for me, I don't know where I am—
And here I'm already leaving in a hurry
Down a stretch with little to see,
Dark woods everywhere closing in on me.
THE ROLE OF INSOMNIA IN HISTORY
Tyrants never sleep a wink:
An aggrieved and grim
Unblinking eye
Stares back at the night.
The mind is a palace
Walled with mirrors.
The mind is a country church
Overrun with mice.
When dawn breaks,
The saints kneel,
The tyrants feed their hounds
Chunks of bloody meat.
IN THE PLANETARIUM
Never-yet-equaled, wide-screen blockbuster
That grew more and more muddled
After a spectacular opening shot.
The pace, even for the most patient
Killingly slow despite the promise
Of a show-stopping, eye-popping ending:
The sudden shriveling of the whole
To its teensy starting point, erasing all—
Including this bag of popcorn we are sharing.
Yes, an intriguing but finally irritating
Puzzle with no answer forthcoming tonight
From the large cast of stars and galaxies
In what may be called a prodigious
Expenditure of time, money and talent.
"Let's get the fuck out of here," I said
Just as her upraised eyes grew moist
And she confided to me, much too loudly,
"I have never seen anything so beautiful."
IN THE MORNING HALF-AWAKE
A memory of a cloudless summer sky,
The elegant boredom of trees
On a slow, windless day.
The quiet of little-traveled country roads
Crisscrossed by shadows.
The house with curtains drawn,
A pair of red slippers on the front steps,
But no one in the barn
Or among the roses, which like being greeted
And admired this early.
Love, that damn fool, who points a flashlight
With a dying battery into the past
Ought to find more than a goat
Tied to a stake ready to butt anyone
Should they dare to step his way.
THE ABSENTEE LANDLORD
Surely, he could make it easier
When it comes to inquiries
As to his whereabouts.
Rein in our foolish speculations,
Silence our voices raised in anger,
And not leave us alone
With that curious feeling
We sometimes have
Of there being a higher purpose
To our residing here
Where nothing works
And everything needs fixing.
The least he could do is put up a sign:
AWAY ON BUSINESS
So we could see it,
In the graveyard where he collects the rent
Or in the night sky
HE HEARD WITH HIS DEAD EAR
Your prayer. The one you offered
On behalf of someone ailing.
Darkness was his world,
So you shut your eyes tight to come into it.
There was no one there.
He may be wearing another disguise,
You were told.
No one can keep track.
The morning light was full of cobwebs,
As if it had brushed against a ghost.
A cow they forgot to milk
Had lowed all night long.
Now it was peaceful again.
Her bed had its sheets stripped off.
One of her red slippers missing—
In fact, nowhere to be found.
DECEMBER 21
These wars that end
Only to start up again
Somewhere else
Like barber's clippers,
Or like these winters
With their bleak days
One can trace back to Cain.
All I've ever done—
It seems—is go poking
In the ruins with a stick
Until I was covered
With soot and ashes
I couldn't wash off,
Even if I wanted to.
MY WIFE LIFTS A FINGER TO HER LIPS
Night is coming.
A lone hitchhiker
Holds up a homemade sign.
Masked figures
Around a gambling table?
No, those are scarecrows in a field.
At the neighbors',
Where they adore a black cat,
There's no light yet.
Dear Lord, can you see
The fleas run for cover?
No, he can't see the fleas.
OUR OLD NEIGHBOR
Who hasn't been seen in his yard
Or sitting on his front porch
For what seems like forever,
Whose house stays dark at night,
The garage closed, the great
Hearse of a car parked in the back.
Whom, nevertheless, we suspect
Of spying on us at all hours
From behind drawn curtains,
His absence and our alleged presence
Casting shadows on the street
Of almost identical homes
Where an odd rush of wind in the leaves
Now and then makes us imagine
We are hearing muffled voices
Where in truth there is no one,
Only an upstairs window partly open
Over his surprisingly well-kept lawn.
PIGEONS AT DAWN
Extraordinary efforts are being made
To hide things from us, my friend.
Some stay up into the wee hours
To search their souls.
Others undress each other in darkened rooms.
The creaky old elevator
Took us down to the icy cellar first
To show us a mop and a bucket
Before it deigned to ascend again
With a sigh of exasperation.
Under the vast, early-dawn sky
The city lay silent before us.
Everything on hold:
Rooftops and water towers,
Clouds and wisps of white smoke.
We must be patient, we told ourselves,
See if the pigeons will coo now
For the one who comes to her window
To feed them angel cake,
All but invisible, but for her slender arm.
Some of these poems have p
reviously appeared in the following magazines, to whose editors grateful acknowledgment is made: The New Yorker, The London Review of Books, Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, TLS, The Iowa Review, Jubilat, The NewEngland Review, Literary Imagination, and Tri-Quarterly.